NOMADS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A LEGAL IDENTITY HEATHER ALEXANDER * Over the past century, governments around the world have greatly expanded civil registration and the issuance of identity documents of all kinds. The process of identifying and registering individuals is sometimes called establishing their ‘legal identity’. 1 Establishing a legal identity is crucial for people to access many rights. 2 It is also a basic prerequisite for establishing a nationality. A legal identity is also important for governments to surveil their populations. Yet, as more research is done on the legal identity of nomadic and mobile peoples, 3 it is emerging that establishing a legal identity is not easy for them, nor is it a panacea that automatically helps them access their rights. Instead, it can lead to their assimilation. 4 This comment summarises my recent research into the establishment of legal identity for nomadic and mobile peoples, uncovering important and disturbing new insights into this fraught process. 5 Problems with establishing the legal identity of nomads stretch back to the colonial period. 6 The end of the colonial period saw the rapid introduction of laws creating identity documents and centralised registration around the world. However, the short time frame in which these systems were created meant that mass registration was in many cases never done and most rural peoples, including many nomads, entered decolonisation with no identity documents of any kind. Because nomads often lacked a fixed residence, colonial administrators struggled to register them and keep them within their designated, administrative zones. Meanwhile, colonial empires vested settled and urban rulers with enormous, centralised powers, including the power to issue documents, while marginalising nomadic leaders. Nomad territories, usually labelled by the colonial powers as * 1 2 3 4 5 6 Heather Alexander obtained her doctorate in law from Tilburg University in 2020. Her work focuses on nomads, nationality and statelessness. She has several years of experience working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa, Asia and Europe. She lives in Montreal, Canada. To establish a legal identity is to be recognised as a person before the law. See ‘UN Legal Identity Agenda’, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Department (Web Page) <https://unstats.un.org/legal-identity-agenda/>. See also Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN Doc A/RES/70/1 (21 October 2015) Target 16.9. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UN GAOR, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948) art 6; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) art 16 For a discussion of the use of the term nomad, see Heather Alexander, ‘The Nationality and Statelessness of Nomadic Peoples under International Law’ (PhD Dissertation, Tilburg University 2020) 17−21. Heather Alexander, ‘The Open Sky or a Brick-and-Mortar School? Statelessness, Education and Nomadic Children’ in The World’s Stateless Children (Report, Institution on Statelessness and Inclusion 2017) 248. ibid. European colonisation was a political and economic phenomenon marked by the invasion and domination of non-European societies by Europeans. It began in the 1500s and continued in many parts of the world until the 1960s.